Tell Me a Recent #Money Win For a Chance at $100!

Who wants to win $100 of my cold hard cash today? Who’s done at least ONE thing good w/ their money lately, even if you’ve failed in every other aspect? ;)

As we do here every month, it’s time for our monthly $100 giveaway where all you have to do to enter is answer a simple question relating to $$$, and then b) make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter.

You can do the latter part here if you’re new to the site.
(I’ll be cross-referencing it when we pick the winner, so no cheating! :))

I’ve personally been spending a lot of money at Starbucks and Panera Bread lately (now nicknamed Office #1 and Office #COFFEEisSOgoodANDbagelsEVENmoreSOMEBODYstopME!!!), but fortunately I’m about to save a bunch too…

We just pulled our boys out of daycare for the summer and hired a half-day babysitter! She starts today so we’ll see how smart that was or not (please work out, please work out!), but if all goes well we’ll have saved around $800-$1,000 each month, as well as spent more quality time with our little nuggets. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it, but then again I haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to still get all my work done with the new schedule, so we’ll have to check in later to really see how brilliant it was or not ;) Does it still count as saving if you end up *losing* $800-$1,000/mo for not getting stuff done? Haha…

Anyways, enough about me – let’s talk about you! What have you done recently that you’d consider a nice money win? How much is it netting you, whether big or small?

Let us know down below in the comments, and then make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter for your entry to count. We’ll randomly pick a winner by the end of the week and update this page with it.

Hopefully we ALL come away winners though as we steal your amazing tips and tricks! So don’t be shy! Drop ’em below and help make up for all your fails from last month’s giveaway ;)

XOXO,

***GIVEAWAY OVER*** Congrats to PaulM for winning! See y’all next month for another one!

Tell Me a Recent #Money Win For a Chance at $100! was last modified: June 25th, 2017 by J. Money

The best money that I spent recently was when I was at Five Guys and I saw two soldiers trying to decide what to order. I then offered to pay for their meal. They gladly accepted but the sanctification I got from helping them out greatly exceeded the amount that I paid. It was such an incredible feeling and I had a smile on my face the rest of the day.

What’s really interesting is that I got the idea to do it from a guy when he bought a meal for a couple of soldiers at a BBQ joint that I frequent. I remembered thinking how cool is that and I want to be able to do that.

So that guy had a multiplying effect and hopefully this act of giving had a multiplying affect on others as well.

Yes, it’s a great feeling. Since moving close to Ft. Bragg 10 years ago, this happens often here. At least 1-2 times a year we do the same thing. It wonderful to show gratitude to those soldiers serving & protecting our country.

Not really a win for me but for my 15 year old. We added some more money to his IRA since he has a small income and got the opportunity to discuss investing.
He decided to buy some low cost index funds. I’d call that a win for Dad on getting through to him and a win for him for investing in his financial future.

I just scored a GREAT deal on kitchen cabinets! I’ve been toying with the idea of upgrading my 1950’s kitchen (think metal cabinets and cheap linoleum) but couldn’t bring myself to spending $20,000 for the remodel. I started scouring Craigslist for cheaper options and came across beautiful maple cabinets for $500! They happen to be exactly what I need so I picked them up over the weekend. I have planned out the counter, floor, appliances and misc and will come in under $7,000 for the entire kitchen! That’s a huge win and I couldn’t be happier. And I’ll easily be able to recoup that cost when I sell.

We recently trimmed our cell phone and cable bills. We purchased used phone replacements, so have no ongoing fees for leasing phones. Save over $40 per month, and eliminated monthly charges for our cable boxes and saved another $15 per month there.

I’m still house/apartment hunting, but in May my savings rate was almost 51%! IIRC, 30% was towards retirement and the other 20% was towards savings goals for outfitting the house. Also went from a $62 cell bill to $25. May was a good month!

I don’t know if this counts as a “recent” win, but I a few years ago I opened up savings accounts and stock market accounts for my nieces (now 6 and 8) and my son (now 3). I have been buying 1 or 2 shares here and there in companies that I thought might be fun for them (Disney, Nike, Carter’s) a few weeks ago I bought Whole Food Market stock for them..and now Whole Foods is being acquired by Amazon! It’s funny because when I bought the Whole Foods shares for them I looked at Amazon shares, and they cost more than I was willing to spend.

I have saved over $5000 on travel since I started travel hacking last December. We have paid for airfare, rental cars, time share dues, global access passes, hotels, etc. all with points earned from our day to day purchases.

I just moved the bulk of my emergency fund from a low paying money market fund to a 1.5% CD figuring I still have some money available if I need it for small repairs and should I need to tap the CD, I just lose some interest. Not much of a risk considering the money market is paying close to zilch.

Attended a retirement seminar that got me looking at my paycheck deductions. Went to OPM website and found out that my retirement deductions were being calculated incorrectly. Made a call to HR and he admitted that my deductions were at the wrong rate and I was owed $3000 took that money and paid off two of my credit cards.

Mia, that’s amazing! What seminar did you attend? I gotta admit there’s some blocks on my LES I don’t understand and would have no way of knowing if it’s correct or not. Are you FERS or CSRS? Great move knocking out the credit cards too!

We recently bought a dining room set for our new home (old house didn’t have one). Shortly afterwards I found out the credit card I used to pay for it has a “rewind” feature. The dining room set was advertised on sale on another website. Our credit card company refunded us $331. The original company we bought the set from then refunded us $202 because they also put the set on sale shortly after we bought it. So we saved $533 total!

First, I was able to sell my bond index fund for a gain, then use that to buy more XOM, TGT, and UAA for the long haul!

I was using the bond index funds as a safety net until reaching my emergency fund goals – excited to see how the stocks perform in my portfolio in the next few decades!

Secondly – I helped a friend set up their budget in excel and showed them how to use mint. SO awesome when you can send them a link to your blog posts, then help them finalize after they make their draft. It was one of the reasons we started our blog, to help others :).

My friend told me she opened her Roth! :D She said “I’m 25 now, and need to start looking towards the future, and what you said stuck with me so I finally did it.” I am so excited! Of course if I won the $100 I’d give it to her for her Roth.

In being good with saving in a shared account with my mom, because she gave my siblings money, she told me I could use my saved money. Most of it will continue to be saved for a trip next year. I have spent some on a new table and chairs I’ve been wanting for a year now. I totally have enough money in my regular savings to have bought the dining set at any point, but have been targeting my Roth contribution and mentally marking that money as not for spending. I’m very happy with chairs that fit the table height. :) For me the win is spending on something I want, that will bring me comfort, and getting over that mental block.

A few nights ago, (early morning). I woke up to my husband rushing into the house scavenging in the dark for something. I got up with my eyes still closed thinking he forgot his keys, wallet; the usual things he’d rush in the house last minute before his commute to work. All I heard was, “There is someone sleeping in my car!…….. Wait so, what? I’m thinking “oh, gosh, call 911. Before ANYTHING happens. Of course my husband is not the type of person you’d consider typical. To be honest I didn’t know what to expect. I heard him outside in his tough as you can sound without sounding as though your making yourself sound that way out of fear voice; “HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY CAR?” Then I heard wheels screech and I knew he was going to run the man down. What I didn’t know is what he would do when he found him. Instead of fighting the dude or calling the cops, he bought him breakfast, and gave him every dollar in his pocket. Told him to be careful, and have a nice day. Not that it was a money “win”, but it was definitely a win all around, in a lot of different ways. It opened up our eyes to a lot more than we were allowing ourselves to realize.

We had a money win thanks to the work of our neighbor. He came over to our house especially to tell us he’d negotiated a deal with our propane provider so we would get propane at $1.25 a gallon cheaper next year!! He and his wife did all the hard negotiations to get that special rate, and then were kind enough to make sure we knew exactly how to call and get in on it. I hope to be able to pay that forward!

We don’t have too many recurring monthly bills, but one of them is for our cable internet. We had been paying $35/month until it recently escalated to $45/month. I contacted BillFixers, and without doing anything more than submitting a copy of our statement, they managed to negotiate our bill down to $15/month for 12 months while tripling our internet speed. Of course, half of our savings go to BillFixers for the service, but it’s worth it to me to not have to deal with the cable company while putting less in its coffers.

My husband and I just paid $12,000 last week to finish off our student loans. While I was a little nervous about dropping that much cash at once, it feels to good to know that, other than our mortgage, we are completely debt free!

We moved across the country to a city with a lower CoL slashing our rent bill in half. We’re saving $1,216.20 a month in rent, or almost $15k a year. WOOHOO! We moved for a variety of reasons — one of them $$$ — and paying our new monthly rent makes me happier than paying rent ever should.

As a bonus, we closed our Comcast internet account and opened a new one (same company) with a 12 month promo when we moved. Additional $30ish in savings per month.

My husband and I recently utilized the easy to use option at our works to automatically have money taken out of our paychecks (every week in my case and every other in his) and put directly into savings. It’s proven to be a simple way to watch our savings grow.

I am new to this, but set up tracking my spending through Mint and already noticing that the $5-10 purchases add up fast! I don’t really need that coffee and I can make a sandwich (almost) as good as I can buy one. Only on month two but noticing change already! It’s not a huge win financially yet, but a huge win for my mindset and creating better habits! The money will come as I learn more.

I have been buying lunch/dinner our waaaaay less in the last few weeks, which has been super helpful in keeping me within my weekly food budget! And, it’s helping me reach my health/fitness goals, too!

I “inadvertently” overfunded all my retirement goals for the year by $1,000 I hadn’t accounted for some automatic deposits I had set up.
I had the extra dough sitting in my account since I’ve been down for most of the last year due to injury.
I’ll probably end up putting several more thousand “extra” dollars into my retirement accounts by the end of the year.

It wasn’t cash, but Mrs AE is in a new moms FB group and someone was asking how to keep their house cool without AC (second floor spot – 90 degree week) – she couldn’t afford a window AC unit and was worried the little one was getting too warm in her crib.

We happened to have an unused unit sitting in our garage that works so Mrs AE sent her a message asking if she wanted it.

Long story short she did but couldn’t afford gas to drive 40min to our house so Mrs AE jumped in the car and met her half way. My in-laws were in town and threw $20 in an envelope and taped it to the back of the unit

My husband has his own business doing home improvement and needed a shop to work out of. When we were looking for land to put a garage on, we found a cute, little bungalow for sale with two garages, a large fenced in yard in a quiet neighborhood. One of the garages was a large, heated garage used for auto body by the previous owner. We decided purchasing this house would be a much smarter investment than building a garage. We got a great deal on the house and are renting it to a friend of ours. Our tenant uses one of the garages and my husband works out of the shop. My husband pays us $250 rent per month (to cover his share of utilities etc.) and our tenant’s rent covers the mortgage and all other expenses. When we are ready to downsize, that cute 2 bedroom little bungalow will become our retirement home. Smartest money move we have made this far!

My husband and I finally sat down and put a budget together! This is a major event in our relationship because we have always disagreed on our money philosophies. So far, it has really helped us fight about money less and I am super excited about this first step! Cheers to building trust!!!

Good luck with the babysitter. That sounds like a great alternative to expensive daycare.
Money? I recently consolidated all our retirement accounts to Vanguard. Now I can trade any stock for $2 and Vanguard products don’t have any transaction fees. Yes!
Oh, I also rebalanced and moved some money from US stocks to International. We’ll see how that works out in a few years.

The best money move I’ve made lately was a year and a half in the making!

I qualified for a merit bonus at work for meeting goals throughout 2016, only to find out in December that the firm didn’t do as well as we projected (so the majority of bonus payouts were significantly reduced and/or eliminated). Because mine fell into it’s own category, no official decision was made, and as I was the only person to qualify for this particular bonus, I’ve spent the last 6 months patiently “checking-in” on its status. By not admitting defeat, and advocating for myself, I got the full amount just last week (albeit 6 months later)! I put every penny right towards saving and paying for some home renovation projects.

We just had a new roof installed, which was a massive bummer to pay off but someone just backed into my old 2000 Honda Accord and we’re getting $1300+ plus from it. Part will pay for a new light on the car but $900+ of that will go towards paying on the roof! Every little bit helps! And I just upped my 401k contribution from 4% to 10%! :-)

The best money move I’ve made recently is “off with his hair!” Well….my hair! Aparently my hairline was going down quicker than the 08 recession, so it was time to come to grips with shaving my head. I went out and bought a pair of clippers for about 30 bucks, the amount I would spend in a month for haircuts. $30 a month,X 12 months=$360 more dollars a year to put to work for me for retirement (love me some VTSAX). I’m sure my barber doesn’t like me too much anymore, but my future self will love that my hair hit a “great recession” early!

ACK! How do you feel now w/ the shaved head? I’m so afraid of shaving off my hawk but I know the day isn’t too far away for me too :( Thankful I can at least grow a forest on my face! Haha… my goal one day is to compete (and win) in a beard competition :)

Paid off medical bills and used the “extra” paycheck this month (hubby gets paid every two weeks but we budget expenses based on two checks per month) to make a principal mortgage payment and the rest went into emergency fund.

After years of feeling underpaid, my wife finally worked up the courage to ask for a raise. We don’t know the outcome yet, but I’m insanely proud of her for asking. It’s not really my money win, but I’m going to ride her coat tails on this one and call it a family win :)

I’ve got some money in an actively managed investment account (was originally set up for me by my parents). I haven’t been doing anything with it because I was too nervous to have an awkward conversation with the advisor about switching to a passively managed account, but I finally grew a pair and scheduled a phone call with him. I know I can save myself quite a lot of money over the life of the account because of fees, taxes on short- and long-term gains, etc.

As my son gets ready to depart for basic traning with the Marines (and will be earning his own college education – unplanned bonus) he asked me how to set up a saving allotment from his pay on top of TSP contributions. I think my attempts at financial education are paying off! This could be huge savings for us in the future!

Each year in our local community, several churches unite to do a major Back-to-School event where backpacks, shoes, socks, and supplies are provided to local children for FREE! This year our church is participating. Aside from the backpacks, socks, etc., I used my money to purchase books for our community children to also have for free! I purchased 100 books for kids ages 4-7, now I am budgeting so that I can purchase more books for older youth! Although these books are definitely not a part of my budget, I know that they will be a blessing for years to come for many of the community children!

My wife, her sisters and mother are saving us a nice bit. We priced painters to pain the kitchen, living room and hallway and it was ranging from $1600 to $2600. My Mother in Law told my wife that since my wife is home for the summer (teacher) that she’d come over and help her paint, then the sisters joined in so I have a whole crew at my house painting today while I’m at work. I’d much rather be painting. So, for $300, the house will hopefully look new and nice. Knowing my wife, it’ll be amazing.

Let’s see, I recently paid off my Old Navy credit card, and seeing that $0 balance felt great! I recognized a while ago that I just really need to stop buying clothes because it really doesn’t matter how cheap they are and I don’t need any, so I’m going to see how long I can keep it like that.

I also went hiking yesterday with my sister and a friend. Sure I spent money on gas to get there, but otherwise it was a free day, especially since we packed lunch so didn’t need to stop for food on the way home. Plus I have an annual national parks pass so I didn’t have to pay the $25 entrance fee!

I signed up for Checkout 51 and ended up winning $5, which put me over the $20 minimum for requesting a check! I got a FREE $24.95 just for checking boxes on their app and uploading a picture of my receipts. (Ok, so it took a good 8 months.)

My kids finally got fed up with the yucky old couches they’ve been trashing for years. At their request we opened a special savings account just for new furniture. Two months in we have already exceeded my expectations of how much money would funnel to it because my kids are looking for every place to trim $$$. Win! Even more win, we are having regular talks about how jumping on furniture, eating on furniture, putting shoes on furniture, etc have contributed to the nastiness of our current couches, so maybe they will actually take better care of the new ones (or maybe I’ll stick with the original plan of waiting until they leave home to get new furniture….).

We found the FIRE community late in life but luckily found some seats for our age group and jumped on the train. Reached the point where we were ready to downsize the family home aka the Black Hole of Need. We’re usually DIYers with most everything but decided to leave the sale of the house to the pros.

We were disappointed with the suggested sales price but was told there was a plan. Sure enough, 5 showings and 4 offers later, we got 16.000 over asking price. Houses in our price range continue languishing for months and months. Sometimes you’ve just got to hand it over to a professional to get the result you want.

Headed to the mountains to buy a much smaller home in an area with reasonable expenses. Keep on doing the good work, J.

My boss gave my husband and I $100 for our wedding. Since I’d been thinking about gifting a friend $100 for a while, I decided to give her the money. She was so thankful and I felt great about helping. A week later, my husband’s boss gave him $100 as a thank you for his hard work. We gave away some of that money and then we were offered $120 to give someone a ride to the airport! Lots of financial blessings this past few weeks.

This could have been a major win, but I didn’t have quite enough patience for it. I needed a flight to Austin from Denver, and my boyfriend suggested Frontier since he’s since those tickets at super cheap prices. They were hovering around $150 for the dates I needed and then dropped to $78! But my BF said he’s seen them even cheaper, but I bought them anyway and in a few days they were only $38! Aargh! I know you’re taking a gamble with flight prices, but that extra bit of patience could have saved us $120 for 3 tickets!

I have started babysitting as a side hustle and I love it! Not only do I get extra $$$ per month to pad my travel account, but I am also helping the parents with their busy lives. The best part is I love meeting and hanging out with the next generation! They are so cute and clever and it’s so amazing to spend time with kids (I don’t have any of my own). I feel these future mini-adults have what it takes to help our world!!

My husband and I are going to get some insurance in case once of us kicks the bucket. Great thing is, it allows us to update every 2 years. My husband needs an incentive to lose weight and get his health back on track. I’m the main bread winner so I need it to ensure his lifestyle.

I arranged for free haircuts through a service swap that I started on Facebook. It is only a savings of $40 per month, but this is an expense that I couldn’t delete or reduce. I have to get my hair cut (it’s short), and it needs to be well done. And I can’t do it myself! I live a very, very frugal life and that one expense was gnawing at me.

My biggest money win was pushing for a raise. I was promoted and did not get what I thought I deserved, after many years of being told to wait for that promotion and THEN I’d be rewarded. I am not a confrontational person, and in general, I am sure I should have been pushier throughout my career, but like most women (I am told) I was too nice. Well, not this time. I sent an email to my supervisor expressing how disappointed I was in not only how the company handled telling me about the promotion and raise (they didn’t) but also in the amount. I outlined the comparative salaries within the company and in the surrounding area (salary.com) and also reiterated my accomplishments and generally the amount of money I’d handled for the company. It worked. They came back with a counter offer, which was also lower than I wanted. I pushed again and finally got in the range I wanted. This effort yielded me around $22,000 gross annually. I call that a win! It also was a win in confidence to demand what I deserve, which ultimately can only be a benefit! If I had just let it go, not only would it have taken me YEARS to earn that amount from incremental salary increases, but I would have felt like I was constantly being taken advantage of. Winning feels great!

A pile of scrap metal has been accumulating in my basement for years. Finally this morning, I loaded it into the car, and took it to the recycling center. It was worth $99.52. I added 2 quarters and walked out with a one hundred dollar bill.

I switched the majority of our money from a local bank to an online bank. It was relatively easy to do and the interest rares are much, much better! (I researched online & bank rates before doing this, so I could get the best deals!)

I just filled out the paperwork for my weight loss reimbursement through my insurance company. Not only did I lose weight, but I actually filled out the form and Saturday received my money in the mail!

When I got my <3% "merit increase" I upped my 401K from 10% to 20%. Not only do we not miss the money, we are actually considering bumping it up again to 25% once we finish saving up for next year's preschool/daycare. Only one more year and then we'll hit kindergarten! And we can both max out the 401Ks!

We have been teaching out son about money. He is 4 years old. As we walk through parking lots we always look for dropped pennies. The other day he found $0.27 (a quarter and 2 pennies). He was freaking ecstatic! On Saturdays we give him his 8 quarter allowance. He has a piggy bank with four slots – Spend, Save, Give and Invest – and he puts one quarter in each. Of the next 4 he can choose where to put 3 of them but the 4th quarter goes with us to church and he donates it. He knows what those quarters are so finding one and some pennies in the parking lot was a big deal for him.

I sold out of a lot of portfolio positions that I worked hard for but nagging credit card debt was always behind me and it was time to pay it off. I’m glad to have paid it off. I then repositioned my portfolio around Realty Income for a steady monthly income while I work to save more money and buy back into the stocks that I love so much. For me, that debt was just highly annoying to see and growing faster than some of my dividends.

I only had $1500 left in the bank and wanted to quickly grow it. I ran into someone at an event selling inflatable lounge chairs and we got to speaking about his business and what he did. Later on, when I realized his margins I told him I would wholesale the product and run an upcoming local event for him. Just did that event this past weekend and made a cool $5k.

When I was doing my taxes at the end of March, the H&R Block site posted a “compared to last year” side by side grid of my income/deductions/etc. I glanced through and realized somehow I’d failed to include my mortgage interest and real estate taxes in 2015’s itemized deductions.

This month, I finally got around to filing the Amended return — because I started thinking it might be enough money to fill up my much-needed “new laptop” budget line in YNAB.

Even better, the refund is $750 exactly–which was the full price plus taxes of the computer I really want. :) It’ll take a month or so to get the check, but not as long as it would take to save at my $50 a month budget!

I’ve had several in the past few months since I’ve started focusing on my finances more; decreasing my monthly cell phone bill, signing up for a pet sitting service which has brought in over $300 in extra income in a short period of time, and changing my W4 allowances so that my paycheck is a little higher each month. I get a very large tax return every year so it doesn’t worry me. And I’m using the extra money to contribute more to my Roth IRA and pay down some debt.

Switched our 3 cell phone lines from T-Mobile to MintSIM. Both have unlimited talk and text. The old service had 10 gb of data per line but we never used that much so we reduced it to 5 gb per line. Our month bill went from $140 per month to $50 per month. After the initial 3 months at that price it will go to $60 per month if we prepay for a year. Best of all MintSIM uses the T-Mobile network so our coverage is exactly the same =].

We just took an almost free vacation plus got paid to go! We rented out our home for the week we were gone so we made cash to be gone on top of an almost free trip.

We paid for 90% of the vacation with travel hacking after taking a online course on it about 6 months back. We didnt spend any money we were not already going to spend to earn the rewards to take the cost free flights and cost free hotel rooms. While at our destination we did most of our own cooking. Part as a money saver and part due to an allergy.

I finally sat down and figured out what my side hustle was costing me! Although I was netting $250 for 8 hrs of work on Sat and Sun, I was spending close to $200 in daycare, gas, and tolls to earn that $250, so a net profit of $50 for 16 hours of work! I’m working on a new hustle that I can do from home on the weekends that will bring in real money for my time instead of earning money just to pay others!

Here is my $40 money win for life:)
I’m on a fixed income, so any “new” or worse, “ongoing” expenses added to my monthly budget is a concern.
After a recent eye surgery there were complications which required me to use super expensive eye drops daily, to reduce my eye pressure. My co-pay was $40 a month.

Long story short, because I kept asking questions and worked with my eye doctor, I now no longer need to use the drops – $40 win for life! – probably more as drug prices are rising.

He’s a busy professional and he’d forgotten our conversation about potentially eliminating the eye drops – so all it took was a reminder from me and voila, we tested it – $40 back in my pocket. SWEET!

We had some unexpected departures at work and I reached out to those in charge and made a case for them to appoint me as Interim Executive Director while they begin and go through the search process for a new Executive Director. This has given me an immediate 10% raise, which is being divided between investments and student loan payoff. Additionally, this experience positions me well for future job growth and opportunities. It’s always great to take advantage of opportunities you weren’t expecting or planning on!

I went through every utility payment from mobile phone bill to insurance and got some good deals for 12 month contracts. I then tackled subscriptions for things I didn’t need. Eliminated £785 ($1000) from yearly expenses and look forward to repeating the procedure in the near future.

Glad to see other folks mentioning #moneywins for someone close to them as well.

My #moneywin happened while visiting my parents over the weekend. I borrowed their car for some errands and the battery died. After getting a jump, I looked through their glovebox for paperwork for their current battery (they keep meticulous records). Turns out their battery was past the warranty period…but I saw the price they paid for the battery replacement…$150!!

I immediately went to Costco to grab a new battery for them for a grand total of $90 (with core return). Money win! But the story doesn’t end there. While opening the hood of their car I noticed the struts that support the hood were out (which is a huge hazard), so I resorted to using an 8-iron to prop it open while doing the battery stuff. I looked through some more paperwork and noticed the ‘stealership’ recommended the hood strut replacement about a year ago…at an estimated cost of…$200!!!! I immediately went online and found a 5min youtube video on replacing the hood struts for their specific car…seemed like a piece cake. Two problems: 1) the part from Amazon would take a couple of days to arrive and I was headed out the next day 2) my parents are not the most mechanically inclined folks around, after all, they’ve been frequenting the aforementioned ‘stealership’ for many years.

My dad seemed willing to give it a try, so I ordered the part ($22) and sent him the youtube video on the installation. I called him later in the week to check on how it went. Luckily it went smoothly, just took a little longer ~30min. Glad to hear everything went smoothly. The dealership in question was a Lexus dealership. Main takeaways: dealerships are going to fleece you for repairs, either diy or find a 3rd party shop to do repairs outside of your comfort zone, youtube/amazon/ebay are your friends, prepare to pay a premium for luxury cars (ahem J.Money).

I’ve recently installed a ductless AC/Heating system at my old home. In the past I would’ve pull out my credit card and pay for home renovations over time. Not with this one! I’ve saved up the cash for over a year. It felt good that I will not be seeing a huge charge on my next credit card statement!

My good thing is I started saving money from each paycheck for our vacation. After having what I budgeted for, I booked the vacation. I came in a few hundred under budget! Now I get to move that cash to another bucket.

my win is that I bought a file cabinet on Amazon for $89 and the stupid thing came in pieces so I left it in mt hallway unopened for like 2 week’s l. then my neighbor had a garage sale and was selling a slightly less than perfect file cabinet for $1. So i bought that and returned my othwr one and saved $88! Hooray for garage sales.

I got some moneywins. Some times a money win is not spending it at all, I saved $1100 by not buying a purse i’ve been eyeing lol. I then decided to use our tax return to pay off our car ( we file late, still has not rec’d our return yet).
This is our big money win-we just bought a townhouse and our agent asked the old owners to buy home warranty for us. the house have a very old ac and we thought it was working but turned out it didn’t. Because it’s covered by the warranty, we got a new AC and the out of pocket cost is about $600, saving us thousands.

My money win is getting the $100 USD and making it into $140 New Zealand Dollars – peow peow!!! – can we pretend thats a 40% increase already? – haha, makes it sound good right? My real money win this month is making the last payment onto my student loan goodbuy f!*ker!

I went to my Verizon Wireless website to pay my bill, and for giggles checked my plan —seems they have a NEW all in rate that’s $20/ month cheaper than what I was previously paying!!!
I’m happy to save that money, and at the same time – aggravated that you have to search these deals on your own!

I opened a zero interest credit card for 19 months with no annual or maintence fees and transferred 3 high interest card balances. This will allow me to pay off all the balances before interest starts to accrue, saving me hundreds (approx $980) in interest and raising my credit score! Thank you Credit Karma for the suggestion!

Easy. I increased my 401k savings from 3% post tax to 10% pretax. I’m been under the impression that a ROTH was in my best interest for years and with an income of over $250k per year, now I realize that Traditional 401k is the way to go. I will up that to 15% later this year. Still paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans, but want to ensure my future; even though I doubt I will ever retire.

Don’t doubt that! You’re on a $$$ blog reading about $$$ tips, so as long as you follow them over the years w/ a salary like that you’ll be able to hit it for sure. I’d even check out the niche $$$ bloggers out there who specialize in super high incomes from like doctors and lawyers/etc (I’m assuming you’re one of them since you mentioned high student loans, but either way their advice may hit you stronger over time).

My husband and I recently started the journey to FI in October and he wasn’t totally on board when I started. We have a long way to go, but have since made awesome progress. We’ve lowered our credit card debt from $14K to now $7,500 in just 7 months on one income (and two kiddos). I’ve also learned how to do our taxes on my own and realized I accidentally paid a tax bill twice in 2014!! I was able to ammend it and got back $1,000! Last, but certainly not least, I sold my 2006 Jetta (and its really expensive maintenance), bought a used Honda Civic outright, and saved $200/year on the insurance alone.

Called up my credit card company to get a $170 charge reversed… several callbacks later they finally made it happen, which was nice. The real money win was creating a two-week food plan for myself; now saying “no” to eating out is a lot easier, and I’m grocery shopping just as much.

I increased my retirement contribution to take full advantage of my work’s match! I had planned to slowly increase until I met the match because I kept telling myself I needed to put more money towards our debt. But then I realized it was silly to miss out on free money and just bit the bullet. I barely even noticed the difference in my paycheck, but it’s been great to see my retirement account increase!

I finally invested my IRA. It had been sitting in an account for 6 years, ever since I left my last job. I thought it would just magically make money, but apparently that’s not how IRAs work. After a 30 minute phone conversation, my money was invested and now I get to watch it creep up and down (but mostly up – fingers crossed!).

After weighing my options I put a little more money into repairing my almost 10-year-old, high mileage car rather than just giving up and shopping for a new one. I’m hoping to get at least one more year out of it and decided that, at this point, it’s still worth keeping instead of taking on car payments again.

Fun to see what everyone is doing! I’ve created a daily ‘smart rich lady’ date on my calendar where I go in and check all of my accounts, track my spending, and put a little extra cash into my emergency fund, if possible. Slowly but surely getting that emergency fund to a solid place (while still working to pay off the credit card bills). SMART RICH LADY!!

We have been aggressively paying off my student loans from undergrad and grad school by paying $1,400 a month toward them. Proud to say we made the last payment this month and we now have that much more to put toward our down payment for a house!

I was piggybacking my brother on this, but still counts as a win. He told me about a new currency like bitcoin, called ethereum, he was buying with £6 each and is already £36. I was buying with 36, now is 278. I got a nice profit on it.

I just used my chase sapphire reserve card to get TSA precheck. They pay the $85 fee and I don’t have to take off my shoes at the airport. I’m super excited about this one – but was always too cheap to pay for it!

Sounds great about the daycare. We too are making a big change. We are taking a sabbatical next year, taking our 9 year old out of school to do some homeschool/travel. Not sure how that will go…fingers crossed, so I am feeling your anxiety too!

As far as our money win…about 9 months ago we signed up for a free course on travel hacking from Travel Miles 101. These guys are great and we have scored almost $10000 worth of future travel. Its not effort free though. It can be stressful… so go into it with eyes open.

I just took the plunge and joined cell accounts with my fiancé. He works for a Telco company so we basically get it for free.

Also, I have some large upcoming financial obligations that are making money really tight right now. I still felt led to give some young missionaries at our church some cash. It always feels good to contribute to a cause bigger than yourself.

I accidentally washed my phone in a load of laundry. Oops , silly me cried like a baby. I had purchased this phone on a sale and the current price was way more than I wanted to pay. I had the money but just chose not to make the purchase. A couple weeks later I read about a deal at Republic wireless. Long story short, I purchased a phone at Amazon for 60.00. I purchased a Sin card from Republic. I paid for the first months service and I will be receiving the next six months for free. Being patient and disciplined saved me a great deal of money.

Hmm… difficult to think of a win since I just signed a lease on a place that’s too pricey for my liking, but such is life while I am tied to this expensive area. A win, then… Today I decided to start funneling more money into investment, as I started to learn how to handle the stock market back in September, but random big expenses threw off any kind of constant flow into that account (paying off student loans, acquiring a car, being talked into vacation (ack!) with my mom (well, ok mom), then saving up enough to put a deposit on the apartment lease, etc…). Anyway, now that I have tinkered a bit and feel like I’ve gotten the hang of it, I am going to put at least $200 per paycheck into it. Hopefully I will continue being successful with my stock market tinkering! :)

J, what are your thoughts on the Robinhood app? Super accessible to people unfamiliar with investing, but perhaps some downsides from a more mature investor’s perspective? Let me know what you think, I’m quite curious!

Oh sweet – I don’t follow your other site so I actually didn’t know you had already shared your thoughts in that review – thanks!
I actually got started with investing by using Robinhood since September, at the recommendation of one of my classmates. I found it really accessible for someone super new to investing (and definitely utterly clueless), and it really got me interested in actually doing that (more logically/profitably and less on a whim, haha). So that’s where I’ll be funneling in my extra cash for now, until I am no longer a student and have an actual job that might provide enough extra for a proper size portfolio of more long term holdings.

I’ve had a couple of wins this month. First, I took advantage of a promo at CapitalOne360 and got $200 in bonus.
Second, I’m a vaper and I decided to stop using crappy pre-built coils and start building my own again. I expect this will save me ~$30 every month (ok, starting next month as I had to buy new hardware to make it happen, using the $30 I had budgeted for this month).

I’ve set a new stretch goal to save $10,000 by early 2019, on top of my already scheduled savings. It’s going to be really tough, but hey, that’s what overtime is for.

Inspired by reading of the many creative ways to get ahead in your blog (and those of others you have shared as well), I’ve recently started saving an additional 10% of my earnings, on top of the already 25% I automatically save for the tax man.
I am not sure what I’ll wind up with at the end of the year as I am self-employed and my income fluctuates, however I’m REALLY jazzed about it and look forward to doing it each and every time I do!!
I really thought it would be difficult, but it actually has gotten EASIER and more exciting as time goes on. Thanks for all the wonderful tips and inspiration!!

We have a young daughter and have been using neighborhood email lists, NextDoor and friends with older kids to find gently used clothes and gear for her, rather than buying everything new. Kids outgrow stuff so quickly, we quickly realized it was just wasted money! And when we are done, we are also passing items along. This was hard for me at first – I’m a little weirded out about using stuff from strangers, but I’m getting very good at thorough cleaning!

I canceled my bus tour in England after three terror attack within three months. In this situation I opted for a much cheaper and safer staycation. The difference between the two vacation went to my emergency fund.

We canceled our Frontier cable/wifi subscription. This has saved us about $450 alone just this year. I must confess, I was nervous at first but it actually was the best thing for my marriage. It allowed us to save, increase communication and more importantly spend quality time with each other.

We also opened an additional checking account with 5/3 bank which finances our car loan. The bank gave us an offer that if we open an account with them and follow 3 simple steps, they would give us $300. Whoop, whoop! We are excited about this financial win as well! We are hoping to turn this into our emergency account.

I doubled my income in less than one year by using The Mental Bank Ledger from Hypnosis Motivation Institute.
At this time last year, I was making $16k a year and now I’m pulling in almost $40k. It takes only a few minutes every night just before going to sleep, it’s easy and fun.
If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself: https://hypnosis.edu

I am NOT an affiliate and do not receive any compensation for saying this. It worked for me and I am currently using it to increase my income to $80k by this time next year.

We recently opened a 529 for our daughter – she’s only 5 months and we haven’t put a ton of money in it (mostly, money from relatives for her baptism), but we started it! In 18 years, given compound interest, we’ll be cooking with gas :)

Just bought a HUD foreclosed home in a nice family neighborhood for $58k, spending $15k to rehab it and will rent it out for $1k. Going to be worth $90k after rehab which will boost my monthly cash flow to almost $4k per month and add another $15kish to my networth.

This year we are looking for a new house. So we’ve put the plans for a medium-expensive holiday on ice, and instead will go on a one-week holiday to a little holiday house closeby for a much smaller sum. Added bonus is that the house is big enough for six adults and we’re just two, and so the in-laws are coming to stay with us for a few days of that week. I’m looking forward to spending some relaxing time in their company!

I am finally getting in gear to pay down my HELOC, which was used for purchasing a camper my husband could get into and enjoy when he was sick with cancer. He died last May but I am continuing to take road trips in his honor. I am stashing any extra cash by redeeming cans and bottles I find on my dog walks (10 cents each in Oregon!), selling unused items on Craigs List and in a local free ad paper, and reverting to my minimalist frugalist non-shopping habits that I honed many years ago when our kids were small.

I finally did the paperwork necessary to transfer my high-fee money market mutual funds over to some Vanguard index funds that will yield much more in the long-term… felt so good to drop the transfer papers in the mail as a gift to my future self and family!!

I’m working on paying off my student loan debt after finishing school. I’m also trying to contribute something to my 401(k) to get it rolling. Through stricter budgeting, I was able to free up a little extra cash and increased my 401(k) from 4 to 5% of my income. That’s all for now until the student loans get taken care of.

My latest money hack is to drip feed cash I would have spent into paying down my (credit card) debt each time I don’t spend. So every time I have the self-control to pass on a Starbucks or a Cinnabon, I take the money I would have spent and apply it to my outstanding debt.

I still feel like I’ve spent the same amount, but I know that I’ve helped move my Net Worth dial in the right direction. Small change, big result.

My money win is I joined http://www.asktrim.com to minimize expenses. Trim is linked to my checking account and lets me know what subscription services I have and asks me do I want to cancel the subscription. I cancelled the Audible subscription of $14.95 month because I only used once.

We are currently in the process of updating our house (straight outta the 90s). We had light fixtures all picked out and ready to order, but I happened to wander into a Re-Store before ordering and I found lights for our kitchen for $45. Save us about $400 and they are super cool, antique lights that make our kitchen look AMAZING!!

1st time posting, but have a couple recent money stories (one good, one not so good).

Good Story (helped a friend):

I had lunch with a good friend who built a very nice large house a couple years ago. He complained about the escrow getting bumped up on his mortgage. I pulled up his tax record online and found he had never gotten a homestead exemption. We called the tax office right there and they said they could retroactively apply it. Saved him about $5k in back taxes and who knows how much in the future.

Bad Story (me):

Same friend was asking me what I know about cryptocurrencies (BitCOIN etc.). He was looking into investing in some promising startups coins. I explained to him how I did a bunch of research a couple years ago an purchased some Etherium coins because of their structural and organizational improvements over BitCoin. I was cleaning/simplifying my accounts last year at the same time they had a hack, so I sold it off.

I checked the price of Etherium for the fun of it and almost threw up my food. Etherium had gone from $11 when I purchased to $355 this week. $60k “gone”?

I actually moved it into retirement accounts, so not like I lost money, but tough being right and not getting the return.

I’m just diving in to this whole getting my financial shit together thing so, after reading one of your posts about how much you saved by adjusting your insurance I too called USAA and I’m going to be able to save a little over $200 per year by bundling our auto, renters, and VPP insurance policies with them! AND, to top it off, I am going to take that $200 and put it in it’s own savings account to start doing the same challenge you did where I put all the extra money from the year in it’s own savings account and then do something smart with it to make it grow! Thanks for the inspiration! :)

I’m trying a new way of tracking my favorite forms of discretionary spending, so that I can keep them under control. Making it as simple as possible, since other, more complex methods lasted only a month or two (I stopped using them and felt guilty, so then I stopped looking at the logs completly).

I downloaded the iPad app Spending Tracker and upgraded to Pro (just $3.20).

I “give myself” $200 a month (as Income). I track every purchase that falls into one of these 5 categories: Books, Clothes, Music, Software, and All Others. I make myself record the purchase (as a Transaction) as soon as I spend the money. These categories are the ones that tempt me the most. I am pretty generous with myself about them. For instance, with Clothes, it has to be a Want vs. a Need (if I Need a new pair of shoes for work, I don’t count that).

I also “give myself,” as income, any monetary gifts or gift certificates that I could use to buy things in these categories.

I have the app set to display a month at a time. I also set it to carry over any Income not spent from previous months. So, for June, it now shows me Income left from my $200 this month; Expenses (all that I’ve spent this month), Carry Over income from April and May, and my Balance.

I started doing this in late April. Proud to report that I have a balance right now of $74.52.

Hoping I can keep this up. This is the simplest I’ve ever made my tracking of discretionary spending. When I get really busy and have lots of deadlines, this is the area where I’m most vulnerable to unplanned spending. One big advantage to this app is that it’s on my personal iPad, which is the device I use most often.

We are super boring homebodies and don’t go out much. Our occasional splurge is going out to to eat. To avoid spending $ when we go out, I have been doing mystery shopping (for some reputable companies- there are many scams out there). I usually only do food related assignments and once a month or so I get a free meal, and sometimes I even make a little bit on top of the free food. All I have to do is fill out a detailed survey. This week I was finally able to get a mystery shop for a really nice restaurant that I have been wanting to eat at for a while. I’ve been trying for this restaurant for a few months, but its really popular and has been a difficult assignment to get. Finally, I got it – a nice three course dinner for 2 was fully reimbursed and we had left overs. So, that is my money win- trading little bit of time filling out a detailed survey for really good free food.

And, we were able to give our waitress an award redeemable for $, because she did something that were were specifically looking for. She was so excited- it made us feel pretty good being able to give it to her. It was a total win win for us and the waitress.

I paid off all of my credit card debt about a month ago!! A week or so later I had a co-worker who was telling me about a great sale on coffee tumblers that I had to check out. I told her that I couldn’t because I didn’t have the extra money for a tumbler (I didn’t need one…mine works just fine–though I left that part out). She looked at me as if I had had a bout of memory loss and said “credit card”. It was a really huge moment for me to say that I didn’t use one anymore (and I knew that that was because I paid it off and I don’t spend money that I don’t have anymore!!) #moneywin

When Kohls gives out their $10 off $10 purchase ever couple of months I purchase something for exactly $10. There is no tax so I get the item 100% free. I turn around and sell the item on EBay for a 100% profit. I then take that money and add it to my daughters 529 college savings plan. Every bit helps. This feels really good for me because for many years I could not save anything and now she will be in college in 4 years. I wish I knew how to manage money years ago but I’m determined to make up for lost time!!!!!

We paid off some debt recently and we’ve set up an automatic additional payment on our car loan. Get that thing gone! We’re also doing an automatic transfer into our savings account each month, which usually means that we don’t spend that money. I think that’s a pretty nice win.

We saved $1,000/year by cutting cable bill in half!! We were paying Comcast $180/month previously for a combined “bundle” of internet & cable with over 200 channels. In March 2016, we cut our bill to $90/month by siginificantly reducing the number of channels to just basic channels. Then we paid Sling $20/month to actually sign up for channels we actually watched. In March 2017, I called Comcast & further reduced our bill to just $70/month as I had to tell them that I was ready to switch to Direct TV!! What a NICE SAVINGS on a nuisance bill…cable!!

Our company changed our health insurance benefits which surprisingly reduced the cost to me. Instead of pocketing the extra $10 a month I upped my retirement withholdings. Investing that extra cash will benefit me more than an extra cup of coffee a month.

This is pretty modest, but it’s recent. My favorite magazine came up for renewal earlier this month – $67.50 for a year’s subscription. I remember thinking, “It would be awfully nice if I could get it cheaper.” I was supposed to pay in three installments, but they sent an invoice for the entire amount. I went to the website to pay by credit card and found out that I could get a year’s subscription for $25, two years for $34! I signed up for the two year subscription. From now on, I’ll always go to a magazine’s website to see if I can get a better deal.

My other projects

Disclaimer

I, J. Money, only claim the thoughts from my head. I am not a banker, CPA, money manager or anything else of that sort. Please seek a professional for any "real" advice. More info: privacy & disclosure page